This is not an essay on the moral merits or demerits of capital punishment, nor does it address the question of whether the death penalty is a deterrent.

This is rather a discourse on whether capital punishment is one more thing that we as a society now do so badly, in such a climate of intellectual dishonesty, that we have made it ridiculous.

I don’t know whether Americans ought to be concerned that much of the Free World thinks we are barbaric for continuing to accept capital punishment, but I do know that I would rather not have much of the Free World think that we are idiots who, in the immortal words of Lyndon Johnson, couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel.

At this writing, Christa Pike, 50, is in critical condition in a Tennessee hospital because of–and despite–the distinction of being the first woman executed in Tennessee in two hundred years. Readers who have been tempted to poison a significant other because of his snoring should be advised that the stuff Tennessee gave Pike–twice–actually induced snoring.

In a macabre way, the Pike debacle represents progress of a sort:

Earlier this year Tennessee was forced to call off an execution after hitting the vein but being unable to locate the required backup IV line. Ohio has twice halted executions in recent years because of inability to find one of those mischievous blood vessels. Alabama had similar problems one glorious day in 2022, but after three hours of hunting in vain for a vein sliced the prisoner’s arm open and introduced the mortal substance that way. Roll Tide, Roll! One dose did the job in Alabama; Arizona has been known to require as many as fifteen.

Botched executions are nothing new. The Chair, the rope, the gas........

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